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GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK There’s an unmistakable undercurrent of anger in Good Night, and Good Luck beyond Edward R. Murrow’s war of words with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Director and screenwriter George Clooney cannily uses a speech by Murrow in 1958 to bookend the film with a scathing indictment of what was then the modern media, and the parallel to today’s media is unmistakable. Things are even worse today, as Murrow foretold. In his speech, Murrow he derided the media for being "fat, comfortable, and complacent," and television for "being used to detract, delude, amuse and insulate us." He was right then and he’s even more on target today. Good Night, And Good Luck has similarities to the Al Pacino half of The Insider, both films dealing with the inner workings of CBS News. The main performance by David Strathairn as Murrow was incredibly effective; by casting someone not a star as Murrow, Clooney was able to bring Murrow to life completely. I’d only seen and heard Murrow fleetingly prior to seeing Good Night, And Good Luck but I believed that was Murrow on the screen without question. The same can be said of Senator McCarthy, whom I realized I had also never seen or heard before, but actually was the real mccoy. Clooney presented actual television footage of the Senator McCarthy and it was fascinating to see and hear him; to dislike him intensely and immediately. Good Night, And Good Luck was an organic recreation of the 1950s, right down to the omnipresent cigarette smoke. I thought it should have been even longer, that some of the supporting characters who worked on Murrow’s news program See It Now were a little underdeveloped, even Clooney’s character, Fred Friendly, then-President of CBS News. Still, Good Night, And Good Luck is a hell of a good movie. - John Orquiola
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